The importance of children's play as an avenue for development and as a central activity revealing of the child's cognitive and affective status has long been recognized by researchers and clinicians. Play is sensitive to the important developmental changes in symbolic capacities during early childhood. Moreover, play also reveals concerns that the child has. It is hypothesized that a child's experiences with an affectively disordered mother should influence both cognitive and affective features of the child's play. It is also predicted that mood disorders will interfere with the mother's ability to become involved with the child in play. This study will test these hypotheses by examining the narrative themes, the affect-relevant themes (e.g., aggression, fear, helplessness, nurturance, mastery), the cognitive level (sensorimotor, presymbolic, symbolic), the veridical affect during the play, and other more specific characteristics of the play. The mother's intervention in the child's play will also be assessed - the interventions, the strategies used to communicate the borderline between fantasy and reality, and how much departure from reality is allowed or encouraged. Participants are 2- to 4-year-olds and their mothers who have been videotaped in semi-naturalistic conditions representative of early rearing experiences. Mothers have been diagnosed as normal or as depressed (bipolar, unipolar, minor depression). A comprehensive coding system has been developed for coding variables such as maternal involvement, directionality and hedonic valence of exchange between mother and child in play, narrative themes of pretense play, and cognitive levels of the mother's and child's play.